I love this superb piece of poetic justice for a dumbass Yankee fan, courtesy of Rob Johnson of the Seattle Mariners. Clue to fan: seats in the ballpark are for watching the ballgame – if you insist on using your cellphone in the ballpark, either wait until the end of the inning and make it brief or hustle your dumb ass up to the concourse!
I was just downstairs taking care of a small matter at 4 a.m. when I heard some scrabbling outside. I thought nothing of it, then heard some mewing and fairly pitiful mewing at that, which I assumed was coming from the living room. The thing is… our cats don’t do pitiful mewing, at least not unless I’m in the kitchen and Chairman follows me in wanting treats. And the mewing sounded very much like it was right outside the front door. Which made me think “When was the last time I saw Wes?” I concluded that “Many hours ago” was the answer. So I shut the other three in the kitchen and unlocked the front door. As soon as I opened it a crack, in darted Wes, looking decidedly sorry for himself. Poor Toothless, I’ve never seen him so keen to get in the house. He was cold and hungry (not that he isn’t always hungry) and very happy to see me. He must have slunk out when Erin last opened the patio door around 10 p.m. and she didn’t notice him. Tut tut.
Today is the British General Election. I exhort every citizen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to exercise their right to vote today. Even if you think there is no point because you live in a safe constituency, you should cast your vote. Do not stay home, do not spoil your ballot. Vote. Make your opinion known. Many people sacrified a great deal over many years in the struggle for universal suffrage. They fought long and hard for you, so that you and everyone else in this country has the right to vote for your government. Universal suffrage was not established until 1928 – only 82 years ago. You have a responsibility to vote. Please make sure that you do today.
So, the Red Sox beat Texas 7-6 last night. I didn’t have time to stay up and watch, but it doesn’t look like they exactly covered themselves in glory. However, they got the job done. None of the starting rotation has been pitching well so far this year except for Josh Beckett and this was true again last night. Tim Wakefield gave up six runs in the first five innings and left the game after six innings on the hook for a 6-2 loss.
Darnell McDonald was called up from the minors earlier in the day to make his debut, pinch hit in the bottom of the 8th and promptly put a 2 run homer into the Monster seats to tie the game then hit a bases-loaded 2-out walkoff single in the 9th. Check out the story here, it’s one of those great tales baseball reguarly throws up.
The other notable news was that Terry Francona sat David Ortiz down during the game when he was 0 for 3 and had Mike Lowell pinch hit, which is a good sign that he’s now prepared to do whatever is necessary when the game is on the line. The Large Father didn’t exactly look happy. Whatever. It’s a team game and a win is a win. And the Sox really needed to win after losing five straight including a four-game home sweep by Tampa Bay.
The Giants, A’s and Marlins all lost; Giants 1-0 at San Diego, A’s 7-3 at home to the MFY and the Marlins 5-4 at Houston whom I would expect them to beat considering how weak the Astros looked when opening the season getting swept at home by San Francisco.
This diamond from the generally superb xkcd is absolute genius, as many cat owners (ownees?) will tell you. All four of our cats go mad for the laser pointer and I can easily imagine the Chairman taking on this role.
My fabulous and incredibly cute wife Erin says some quite strange things from time to time. This is especially likely when she doesn’t think things through before she blurts them out, often leading quality double entendres, unintended puns and “WTF?” moments.
For instance, some time ago she decided to approach me from behind in the kitchen and hit me with her knee. She then exclaimed “I kneed you in the butt!” I raised an eyebrow and said “Well, ok, whatever floats your boat. Bend over, then.”
Last night’s gem: “Just get some cream cheese and put it on your thingy”.
Well, hello. I’m back.
It’s been a long time since I last posted. It’s been over three years in fact, which is about three years too long, as I’ve been reminded many times in the intervening period. I’ve never been a prolific blogger, but I’m hoping to do better than I did in my previous incarnation.
I had been thinking about resuscitating my site for a while. I’ve somehow fallen into compulsively using Facebook over the last few months even though I don’t much like it and am irritated beyond measure by each gratuitous layout change. However Facebook has prompted me to try to starting blogging again because I have become increasingly frustrated by how little you can actually say there before your text is hidden behind a “See more” link. By some considerable margin the worst aspect of Facebook for me is the mind-blowing level of wanton illiteracy on display, but that’s a rant for another occasion.
Typically after a hiatus I prefer to start anew – new domain, new site – and this time is no exception. On this occasion I’ve made no attempt to import my old posts. It’s just easier to leave them where they are. I’ve also abandoned Blogger, which I’ve used I first heard of this “blogging” thing in 2000, and started using WordPress. The principal reason this was Google’s decision to deprecate FTP in Blogger, which is profoundly inconvenient for me; at least their alternative solution was not going to work for me. I decided then that it was time to use a much more flexible tool, so here I am.
Hope it works out this time.